How to Archive Mail in Outlook for Mac

If your IMAP mailbox is full or starting to approach the disk space capacity you may need to archive messages by copying them to an offline location on your computer. This will allow you to free up space in your mailbox without permanently deleting your messages.

This guide will explain how to create a local folder within Outlook for Mac and archive messages from your IMAP mailbox to local storage on your computer.

Adding a local folder for Archiving Mail

In the folders list for your account in Outlook you should see a heading for folders labelled On My Computer. You can create a new folder under this heading by right-clicking or Ctrl+click on the On My Computer heading then select New Folder.

You can then rename the folder by right clicking or Ctrl+click on the new folder and selecting Rename.

Archiving mail to the local folder

To copy mail from your inbox or other IMAP folders to the local folder you’ll just need to follow these steps:

1. To move an individual email right-click or Ctrl+click on the move, select the Move option then select the local archive folder as the destination.
2. To move multiple message, just highlight the message you need to move. To select all emails in a folder you can use the Edit menu and apply Select All or use CMD+A on your keyboard. Then right click or Ctrl+click on the highlighted messages, select Move and then select the local archive folder as the destination.

That’s it! You have now archived messages using Outlook for Mac.